Pod Save America - “#ReleaseThePod” (LIVE from LA’s Dolby Theater)

Episode Date: February 5, 2018

House Republicans give America its dumbest conspiracy yet. Jimmy Kimmel, John Legend, and Chrissy Teigen join Jon, Jon, Tommy, Dan, and Erin for a night of politics, games, and musical performances at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. 

🎵 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Erin Ryan. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Guys, we have quite the show for you tonight. Jimmy Kimmel is here.

John Legend is here. Devin Nunes is here. Devin Nunes is is here. Devin Nunes is here. Devin Nunes is not here. Guys. Look at this. Look at you guys up there. Yeah.

What is the Senate in Star Wars called? It's this. It's the Imperial Senate. This is it. There it is. So, guys, before we bring out our special guest, we should talk about the most important public disclosure since the Pentagon Papers. A set of unsourced Republican talking points that were turned into a Twitter hashtag. Devin Nunes' memo is out, and the world will never be the same. So before the memo was released, over the objections of Democrats, Senate Republicans,

and the liberals at the FBI and the Department of Democrats, Senate Republicans, and the liberals at the FBI and the Department of Justice. Here are some phrases that Republican congressmen use to describe it. Sickening, jaw-dropping, worse than Watergate, shocks the conscience, threatens democracy to its core, and my personal favorite from Hungarian fugitives slash Fox News analyst Sebastian Gorka, a hundred times bigger than what caused the American Revolution. Yeah, that is. That is so funny.

Erin, now that you've read the memo, I know you've studied it. What do you think? Was it more than a hundred? Was it more than 100? Was it less than 100? What did the memo actually reveal? Sure. So it revealed to me that the people that were hyping it

are a bunch of snowflakes. Because what was in it was basically that the Faisal Warrant that tapped Carter Page's phone, the most suspicious man in the world, by the way. Like, he walks around, like, twirling a cane, like, suspect me. Suspect me. I'm not a spy.

He described himself as a Kremlin consultant. Yes. Yeah, I mean, the man is... On LinkedIn. To a journalist. To a journalist. In the Trump administration, which is an entire body of people who are all horny to be villains,

Carter Page is perhaps the most horny and inept at being a villain. Because we found out in this memo that he had been kind of off and on under surveillance since 2013 and that the reason for his surveillance was not the Steele dossier, as Nunes had been saying in the first place. It was just one piece of evidence.

Also, four different Republican-appointed federal judges approved surveillance on Carter Page, informal Kremlin advisor, because they believed there was sufficient evidence to suggest he may have been acting as an agent of the Russian government. More specifically, the first time you apply for a FISA warrant, it's based on a whole bunch of evidence you've gathered. You have to renew it every 90 days. And you have to prove that in those 90 days, you gathered evidence during that time period that affirmed what was in your original warrant. So three Republican judges said, yes, you got information on this moron that affirmed your initial warrant.

So they were getting actual real information that worried them. Yeah. Dan, what did you think? Well, I think it did reveal to us that American politics is getting dumber by every second. Because let's just presume for one second that the Republicans are right,

and this FISA warrant never should have been issued. And there was a flaw in the system. The obviously pro-Hillary FBI that tipped the election to Trump, you know, they hid this information to get this... They were with her. Yes. Even if that were to be true, it changes nothing. Because at the time in which this happened, the Trump campaign told us Carter Page was no longer affiliated with the campaign. It has nothing to do with Trump's potential business deals with Russia. It has nothing to do with Donald Trump Jr., dumber than Fredo,

meeting with Russians on the explicit promise to get, quote-unquote, dirt on Hillary. It is, like, so far as a side issue that we should all be careful not to let that distract us from, like, the real crimes that are happening over here. This is like an adjacent crime. Love it. Yeah, let's just...

We're so down the rabbit hole with this dumb fucking memo. Like, let's, this memo was supposed to prove that the FBI helped President Hillary Clinton win at the expense of Donald Trump, who lost the election because of the intervention of a partisan FBI on his behalf. Now, I don't know if you guys are news buffs. It didn't work out for her. But that is not how it went. No, it did not. In fact, a Republican named James Comey, who is the most moral man ever forged.

The sarcasm only sort of worked. Our greatest person 6 foot 7 made of just just moral wisdom out the out the yang just sitting on a bible

sent a letter that cost her the fucking election you know though I would like to you know I think the reason that cost her the fucking election. You know, though, I would like to, you know, I think the reason that Republicans were so, you know, encouraged to support this person is because Carter Page is just so lovable. Who doesn't love and trust Carter Page?

Beloved national hero, Carter Page. He's like a wounded mule. Can you just say, like, the biggest self-own from this entire memo was it also revealed that the FBI launched its investigation into the Trump campaign in July of 2016 after Trump advisor George Papadopoulos drunkenly revealed to an Australian diplomat that a Russian official told him that they had stolen emails from Hillary Clinton. George Papadopoulos who pled guilty to lying to the FBI. So the whole thing was, phony dossier starts investigation, and the actual memo said no. What started the investigation was George Papadopoulos getting drunk

and saying, give me the emails. And just on top of that, the idea that informants are usually perfect angels that come and drop documents on the table at the FBI and walk away without any self-interest is ridiculous. In fact, a Breitbart editor wrote a book called Clinton Cash. That had a story in it about Uranium One. Donald Trump demanded that the FBI start an investigation on Hillary Clinton because of what was written

by a Breitbart editor. So if their starting point is that partisans can't give information that lead to FBI investigations, they have some explaining to do. So the whole thing is just fucking bullshit. It's not on the level, guys. And it's so much stupider than even that. I know. There's so many levels stupider than even that. There's so many levels of stupid to peel back on. I know. It's hard. Because they're

trying to claim right now that this proves that the whole investigation is a witch hunt in which they won't find anyone who committed any crimes. That might have worked up until a few months ago when they charged several people with crimes connected to the investigation.

Paul Manafort, Papadopoulos, Flynn, Gates. There are criminals among us. Several of them have admitted to it. Right, two of them pled guilty. We have two guilty pleas. There's fire when you plead. It's not smoke when you plead guilty. That's the fire at the bottom of the smoke. when you plead guilty. It's not smoke when you plead guilty. That's the fire at the bottom of the smoke.

Even if you believe that James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates were engaged in this plot to take down Trump, then you also have to, if you believe Trump's talking about it, you believe that when Jeff Sessions,

Rod Rosenstein, and Christopher Wray arrived at the Justice Department. Handpicked by Donald Trump. Donald Trump's picks, when they arrived, they were like, here's where the executive washroom is, here's your ID card. Also, please pick up our secret plot to overthrow the elected president. Yeah. Those guys were playing the long con right there.

They were like, we just got to wait until we get into the Trump White House, and then we will become vengeful liberals. to wait until we get into the Trump White House and then we will become vengeful liberals. So, I want to talk about the mastermind behind this memo, Mr. Devin Nunes. There we go.

Oh, here he is. Yeah, no, okay. That's good. So this was, believe it or not, this was not Devin Nunes' first rodeo. It's his second rodeo. It's his second rodeo. This is his second rodeo. Just a second.

Tommy, what's he been up to since the investigation into the president began? Yeah, I mean, if you remember around a couple months ahead of this time last year, Devin held a press conference at the White House where he said he found evidence that Donald Trump had been wiretapped by the Obama administration. So the Trump team flipped out about this. Sean Spicer read his allegations aloud at the podium. Donald Trump was tweeting about it. Don Jr. made an Instagram video because that's how he rolls in the political space. But Nunes lied about the origin of the information. He said he got it from an intelligence source.

In fact, he got it from the Trump White House, his buddies. So Senator Richard Burr, a Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that essentially Devin Nunes had cooked up this whole thing and it was nonsense and it was bullshit. In fact, then the House Ethics Committee started investigating Nunes to look into whether he had disclosed classified information. Now, in a sign of how broken Washington is, the Oversight Committee investigating whether he disclosed classified information was not allowed to review the classified information he may or may not have disclosed. So he was exonerated.

So here we are, rinse, repeat. Dumbass Devin is back on the scene, cooking up a media, and the press corps is like, all right, let's report this thing out. I mean, what's also funny about this is, like, you know, the human centipede of investigations occurring in the U.S. Senate and the House right now. But also the fact that Trey Gowdy, a Republican from South Carolina, who is also the chair of the wraparound shades caucus in the house. He's the only person who's actually read the actual FISA application.

And he has dismissed the Nunes memo whole cloth. Devin Nunes, who wrote the memo, hasn't read the underlying classified information. Devin Nunes hasn't read it. I just, again, we're all a bit too cocky, because let's all point out that we, as a group, were defeated by the dumbest bunch of fucking criminals. So you can laugh all you want. So that's a good segue, John, because as you can all tell, we are not fans of Devin Nunes here at Crooked Media. And we would like to help make sure that our friends out in the Central Valley, California, kick his ass out of Congress for good.

Kick his ass out of Congress for good. And so, tonight we are expanding the Crooked 7 to include the California 22nd. So, we would love all of you to help donate to Nunes' eventual challenger. You can go to crooked.com slash crooked7. We'll be honest, this is a very tough district, but Donald Trump only won it by 53, he won 53% of the vote in 2016, and a

recent poll had it like within 5 points. So anything's possible. So let's beat Devin Nunes. There is, other than Paul Ryan, at this moment, there is no human being in Washington, besides Donald Trump and Paul Ryan, who are doing more to undermine the federal government and our trusted institutions than this dumb fuck Devin Nunes.

He is too stupid to have that job long before he decided to become Trump's lackey. He gave up his whole entire life to wander up to the White House and stake his reputation on Donald fucking Trump. He is despicable. And he may win his seat and is really shitty. Tough ending to that story. But we can drown him in ads that make him look as stupid as he is. Because he always looks like someone whispered a really hard math question in his ear. Is it too loose? No, no. It was a hundred times.

We're at the Dolby, guys. I know. Pretty cool. Dan, speaking of Paul Ryan, who is your idol, I think he has used this opportunity to be as Paul Ryan as humanly possible. Which Paul Ryan means terrible. Yes. And so he's been telling reporters that it was important to release the memo,

but that the memo should not impugn the Mueller investigation. Your thoughts on the tightrope that Ryan is trying to walk here? Well, the only example I can think of, because Paul Ryan, he went out there and in great seriousness said, this should not impugn the Mueller investigation, but we must have transparency. And then the second the memo came out, the memo's author, all of Paul Ryan's colleagues, and Paul Ryan's idol, Donald Trump, all went out and used the memo to impugn the Mueller

investigation, which is sort of, and then Paul Ryan was shocked and saddened by this fact. It's sort of like Paul Ryan gave the matches to a baby. We're like, I gave these to him for fire safety education, and then the house burned down. He's sort of Schrodinger's traitor, right? He's both a traitor and not a traitor at the same time.

It sort of boils down to the process for how a FISA warrant is gotten, and that's a valid conversation that we all could be having. A lot of Democrats, a lot of privacy advocates don't think that there's enough protections for American citizens in this process. But all these guys just voted to reauthorize the act for six more years.

And on top of that, Donald Trump doesn't understand the issue. We know this because he tweeted one thing seeming to oppose or to support changes to the FISA Act. And then 90 minutes later, his staff had cleanup on aisle three and made him fix it. So, like, we're just skirting over the bigger picture issues once again to just go down the rabbit hole of Donald Trump. Tommy, I am sorry. Are you suggesting this is not a conversation about reforming the FISA system?

I don't believe it is, John. I'm sorry. So tell me, I was going to ask you, so some people are saying now, okay, if this memo was no big deal, why did the Democrats, DOJ, FBI fight so hard against its release? I know. Well, it's weird. When I was in government, FISA derived information, information based on intercepts of American citizens. It was like some of the most sensitive

stuff we dealt with. There was like the really sensitive CIA stuff, which was compartmented and, you know, only they dealt with it. But like FISA, intelligence about American citizens is supposed to be treated differently because there is a legacy of abuse. I think in this instance, they may have, they probably shouldn't have focused so much on the harm to sources and methods and that there would be some sort of intelligence equities harmed by the release of this memo. It doesn't seem like that has been borne out. And that's something that happens over and over again when you're fighting the release of something that's classified or asking a reporter not to write it up.

Do they just felt like confirming that there was a FISA warrant issued? Is that what happened? Here's what I think. I think that there was some other piece of information about how this FISA warrant was granted. It's like a human source or a source within the Russian government that we have not

gotten reported out and hopefully never will be, which is why they were freaking out about it. Well, I'm glad they're just playing fast and loose with us. But it speaks to why we shouldn't be fucking around with this stuff and just doing it for political purposes. Well, you don't issue a memo just for a narrative. For kicks, yeah. So let's talk about the reaction to the memo

from politicians and the media. Obviously, there was no surprise that a lot of Trump media outlets treated this like Lexington and Concord. 100 Lexingtons and Concord. But... 100 Lexingtons and Concords. But I think we would all agree that by far the best reaction came from Sean Hannity. And we happen to have a clip.

Now for a segment we call OK Stop. Here's how it works. We roll a clip when we are frustrated by it or it piques our interest. We say OK Stop and then we talk about it. Very simple. Let's roll the clip.

And these revelations are so profound this corruption is so deep, it is so obvious that the special counsel needs to be shut down immediately. And that's not even taking into account Mueller's massive conflicts of interest himself and how his team is... Okay, stop. Oh, this is actually, this is a really good freeze frame. I kind of wish I could make this my Twitter background.

It's like, it's just Sean Hannity's id, just right there. this is a really good freeze frame. I kind of wish I could make this my Twitter background. It's like, it's just Sean Hannity's id, just right there. You know, what's funny to me is, is that this has become such a divisive issue. Most people who are non-partisan or Democrats are just like, this doesn't mean anything. But people on the far right are like, this is, this is the, you know, a million revolutions or whatever. I think it's funny that reality is, this is the spinoff of reality. This is a new reality, its own series. You can just watch it episode by episode

on Sean Hannity every night. This is the moment that it happened. Yeah, you know, first of all, you guys can't see this if you're listening at home. Sebastian Gorka is up next on Hannity. So stay tuned for that. This is, so... Dr. Gorka.

But this is the, like, this is the vicious circle. Because this is the laundry system that takes us from Sean Hannity back to Sean Hannity, right? It starts with the crazies on the right who egg on Donald Trump on Fox News and Breitbart and they say Mueller's corrupt and Comey's corrupt and Deep State and all these Republicans in the Justice Department are out to get Donald Trump and there's no justice and it's not fair. That gets laundered

up, right? It goes up to people like Devin Nunes and it goes up to people like Hugh Hewitt and the more respectable, reasonable people. And they take this and they translate it into the more digestible thing. Then that goes up to Paul Ryan who says, what can we do? We've got to release it. We've got to get the information.

Erin, what are we going to do? We've got to get it out there. And then it goes out there and then we all talk about it. We've got to get the information. Erin, what are we going to do? We've got to get it out there. And then it goes out there, and then we all talk about it. It gets filtered again through the press. And then we spend days talking about it. And then it's released, and we digest it, and we tell the truth about it. And liberals have their liberal take, and the mainstream press does their best to adjudicate this battle.

But, of course, they're always going to be one day behind whatever the fuck he's doing. And then Sean Hannity comes out and says, here it is, the smoking gun. It's proof that Mueller needs to be disbanded. And the whole cycle starts all over again. Wait, but it's worse. Oh, no. Donald Trump doesn't do what he does because he's smart and cynical and creating a narrative. He watches this and he believes it.

He's that conspiratorial. He thinks these people are out to get him this is going right into the twitter feed right here yeah yeah go ahead oh big democratic donors and people like andrew weissman that withhold exculpatory information in cases and gets overturned nine zero in the supreme court okay stop these are no one knows these words yeah this is like the only people that know these phrases are the people in his reddit thread he's so deep in the rabbit hole

his producers are like what is he saying he's speaking in tongues I don't think he's well he's not seen well overturned 9-0 Trump is googling exculpatory this looks like this looks like a report

from some Robert Mueller looks like a report from... Like, Robert Mueller looks like Sean Hannity's older, more successful brother who was given control of the family business. It's a boat company. They make boats. And the thing is, Sean is jealous and he's furious. But the reason he's mad... He's not mad that Mueller, his brother, was put in charge of the boat company.

He's mad because his father's decision was the right one. And it breaks his heart. The jail overturned Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Look, if we as a country, if we care about the Constitution, if we care about the Constitution,

if we believe in civil liberty... You know, every time I watch... I don't make a habit of watching Kennedy, but every time I see a clip of him, it reminds me of being caught talking to someone that I don't want to be talking to. And second thought is, I'm tired of adding gate to the end of every scandal. We need to either figure out a new

thing. It says Mullergate on the screen. Right. Or we need to pronounce it like the Italian way, like Mullergate. The thing that blows me away is that there are two million people who every night finish their dinner. They have one million choices of things

to watch on television, Netflix, and they choose that. Yeah. Source of a lot of problems. But they pay a price for it because this is very agitating at night. You know, you finish your dinner at the golf club. You go home to your home and then you turn this on and you get quite angry. And then all of a sudden you finish the end of the episode and you're like, now I hate football. When did that happen? I loved football. Two weeks ago, I loved football. Now I hate it. I used to think the FBI was great. And now I think it's a bunch of pinko scum. I feel weird. Yeah. And to make matters worse, Sean Hannity is slowly turning into a thumb before I realize.

If we believe in those protections, then the special counsel must be disbanded immediately. And by the way, nobody else will say this, all charges against Paul Manafort and general Michael Flynn. No one will say that. Because it's fucking crazy. Those are unrelated crimes.

Which one of them which one of them pled guilty to? Michael Flynn said I did it I'm working with Mueller now. I'm making a deal. Investigators found handwritten journals in a burned-out Ukrainian home with unwritten paid millions of dollars to Paul Manafort. That's why he's going to jail. No one thinks this. This is not a... Yeah, there's a rut.

He was laundering money through a rug place on the Lower East Side. Even Paul Manafort is watching. He's like, Sean, that's nice, but you're going to jail. His daughter... That's part of the problem. One of the reasons that this is so hard is this is not one giant conspiracy. He got together a bunch of people

who had already been in the process of committing several terrible crimes. Mike Flynn was trying to kidnap some guy from Pennsylvania. Paul Manafort is in so deep with the Russians, he was stealing from fucking everybody. His own daughter was texting like, Dad's going to jail. He's pretty fucked now.

Also, do you remember what Bob Mother was doing when that quote-unquote sketchy FISA warrant was issued? What's that? He wasn't a part of the investigation. No. He was in private practice, probably playing a lot of golf. I don't think he's a details guy. I think Sean's a details guy. Let's keep rolling. Need to be dropped. It's that simple. In the meantime, all this while, the liberal mainstream

media, they have wasted an entire year holding this country hostage. Does no conservative know anybody who knows a thing about graphic design? Does no conservative know anybody who knows a thing about graphic design? This is offensive to me. It's a podcast, Aaron. All right, so just, I'm sorry, but we'll just have to go through it. Here's what we've got. We've got a mix of serif fonts and sans serif fonts.

How much detail do we need for people to understand that it's disgusting? It's a Fox News OTS. It's like 19 TVs. With different colors of fonts and a bunch of different screens with indeterminate things on it. It looks like wrestling and maybe basketball. Update. Update, guys. Coming up, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow. Pat's show tonight on Hannity.

With a false narrative based on a conspiracy theory that President Trump colluded with the Russians, they have and have had no evidence whatsoever because it doesn't exist. The media has been corrupt and lying to you, the American people. At the end of the day, they're nothing but propagandists, an extension of the Democratic Party. Self-awareness is not his strong suit, guys. It's not. It is. Propagandists. Tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists that are so pathologically locked into their hate of President Trump, they don't know any better at this point. There you go, guys. It was beautiful. There you go. guys. That was beautiful. There you go.

Thank you, Sean. All right, before we move on, I just want to talk about how much damage the House Republicans and Trump are doing to the Mueller investigation right now. A new poll out today shows that even 40% of Republicans, not even 40% of Republicans approve of the FBI anymore. Massive drop from when they pulled this last year. Dan, does Trump even need to fire Mueller to protect himself at this point? No, they have succeeded. It is an arcane legal theory,

but Donald Trump has what is called immunity by Republican majority. Because there is no, if Mueller comes and presents actual phone calls between Trump and Putin, talking about Hillary's emails, money laundering, whatever else, presents it to Paul Ryan, Paul Ryan's going to stick it in his desk drawer and wait until after the election. Like they, as long as Republicans are in charge of Congress, what Mueller finds is not going to stick it in his desk drawer and wait until after the election. As long as Republicans are in charge of Congress, what Mueller finds is not going to affect whether Donald Trump is President of the United States. Full stop. I think that's true. I think that there's two reasons

I think to be a bit more hopeful. One is a poll also came out that showed that the vast majority of Americans believe Donald Trump should have to answer Robert Mueller's questions. A big super majority of Americans. And that's a lot of Republicans, too. And I think that's important. And two, you know, I think that we're all pretending as if we don't live in a culture in which the news treats us not as citizens but as pundits. Everybody's an analyst. You know, we're going to talk to Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmel did a great segment where he talked to people

who were against allowing people from DACA in. And you can see that they're expressing their opinions. But they're also doing a performance. Because we have all been trained to be pundits, to argue for our side. And when people answer a poll, they're saying what they think, but they're also saying what they think they're supposed to say

to help their side, which honestly is the same difference. But when the FBI director has to put out a statement to the entire help their side, which honestly is the same difference. But when the FBI director has to put out a statement to the entire FBI that says, I stand with you, I know you're under attack right now, but we're an institution that defends the values of the United States, whatever criticisms you have of the FBI, like, America is bigger than Sean Hannity and Donald Trump and the people that make these kinds of arguments. And there's a vast, vast middle of people who may have their partisan biases, but they're going to see a statement about the FBI director

feeling under assault by a Republican Congress, and they're not going to like it. I don't care what a poll says. I don't care about any of it. But I think we have to understand that this is, and this is why we get so upset with the media to make sure the headlines are right and that they're telling us the full story and that they're not buying the Republican spin because we are not in a legal, a purely legal battle right now, even though that's what Mueller's in. We are in a battle

for public opinion because, like Dan said, those House Republicans, perhaps if everyone in the country was so angry and was so upset that Trump refused to answer Mueller's question or lied to Mueller or lied under oath or did some kind of crime, then it would pressure the House Republicans to do something. But they are going to... I mean, Nunes said, oh, I just finished this memo.

I'm on to a State Department memo. I'm now going to investigate the State Department. They're not going to stop. God, he's like Stephen King. That guy is prolific. They're going to keep doing this and they're going to try to undermine this investigation with these bullshit conspiracy theories

every day and from now until the end of this investigation. And if I'm Donald Trump, I know that firing Mueller would cause such a firestorm that it's much easier for me not to fire Robert Mueller and to just make sure that the entire investigation that he's pursuing

is undermined by all these conspiracies. Not because people believe what the Republicans are saying, but they're not sure which truth is right. The Republicans have their truth, the Democrats have their truth, and who knows, it's all messed up. That's the whole point is what Trump and Hannity and all these people want to do,

even if they're like stumbling into this because they're to aperson idiots, what they're doing is they're creating a permission structure for Republicans to support Trump despite what Mueller finds. They're skeptical of, they think Trump might have done something

wrong, it's weird, but they don't want to leave their tribe. They're creating an excuse for them to say yeah, he lied, but Mueller was corrupt. Everyone's dirty, you know, and that's problematic. Oh, no, I was just going to say, I don't know of a single person who's an FBI voter. No one person is like, well, I was going to vote for a Democrat,

but now I distrust the FBI, so I'm voting for a Republican. I think it feeds into a general overarching attitude toward a specific party. I think people vote, you know, based on the economy. And Donald Trump has taken a lot of credit for the economy. And Donald Trump has conflated the stock market with the economy. And right now, what we're seeing is Republicans

not being great at messaging about the economy. Like, just today, I think if any of you went on Twitter, you saw that Paul Ryan tweeted a real charming anecdote. Paul Ryan, not my dad, the lesser Wisconsin Ryan. He tweeted an anecdote about how he heard a story about a... I have the tweet, yeah. A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week. What?

Said that will more than cover her Costco membership for the year. How about that? So I did a little digging into this. And a Costco membership, just for the basic one, costs like $60 a year. And so $1.50 a week would barely cover a cost. You could get like a Costco membership in one of those big things of Red Vines. And that's about it. You could get a pizza at the, there's a pizza, and that's about it. You could get a pizza

at the... There's a pizza. You can get pizza there. You could get a couple of slices, yeah, but they don't keep very well. You can't even freeze it. You eat it there. You eat all of it. They have hot pizza. Okay. Well, I should go to a Costco. But anyway, my point is, I think that there's a messaging opportunity for Democrats

when it comes to the economy. We don't want people to have that hot pizza at Costco. We don't want people to have pizza at all. No, what I was thinking was, Nancy Pelosi kind of bungled a statement about how corporations were netting most of the tax breaks, and she said that people were getting crumbs. The reality is that, you know, of the tax breaks,

most of them are going to high earners and corporations, and people are getting a tiny percentage of what those tax breaks are overall. So you know the feeling that you get when you're sitting in coach and you walk past first class? Like, I feel like Democrats could make that part of their messaging going into the 2018 midterms. Like, you have a seat on the airplane, yeah, but like, these people have way flat beds and hot towels, and you have a seat on the airplane, yeah, but these people have way flat beds and hot towels, and you have 20 inches of space, and you don't even get a TV in the back of the car. And you thought the 20 inches of space was great,

but now that you hear about the other, yeah, now you're pissed. Oh my gosh, they get cucumber facials while we wait to take off? What's economy comfort in this? Economy comfort just has a little extra padding. It's really nothing. That's the secret. So this is my last question here, which is, I think we all know, all the polling, all the research, all the focus group

says that voters are not going to decide this election based on Russia. They don't care about Russia. They don't care about this investigation as much as they care about the economy, about health care, about taxes, about everything else. So we know that. But we also know that this investigation and the investigation into the investigation from Republicans is going to suck up media oxygen every single week from now until the election. So the question is, how do Democrats handle that? And is there a message that fuses what Aaron was talking about with some kind of message about Mueller and the investigation and the abuse of power? Dan, what do you think?

I think when you think about your choosing your messages, the new news memo came out. everyone had a reaction to it, not a single mind was changed. And that's how this is going to play out till the very end. If you think Donald Trump is innocent, now you're going to think he's innocent on election day 2018. But, so collusion is not the democratic message for 2018. It should be corruption. Because that's what ties all of this together. It is Paul Ryan and Donald Trump giving massive tax cuts for themselves in exchange for $500,000 contributions from the Koch brothers. It is about that teacher in Lancaster getting $1.50

while Wells Fargo gets $3.4 billion in the tax bill. And Democrats have to, they have to be disciplined, they have to run on, and they need their own plan. Because what happened here was, these bonuses came out, Democrats pointed out that the Republicans were overselling it. They're really only people who had been at Walmart for two decades with special qualifications got this bonus. Republicans yelled at Democrats and said, you're out of touch. And then Democrats ran away and stopped talking about the tax plan. And so we need our own plan. One that takes Wells Fargo's tax break, Donald Trump's tax break, repeals it, and gives it a bigger tax cut to the middle class than this tax scam gave them.

out to the middle class than this tax scam gave them. I also think you can actually fold, I mean, corruption allows you to fold in what's happening with the Mueller investigation. I think you say the Republicans who run Washington have abused their power to protect the rich and the powerful. They have protected Donald Trump because they're allowing him to obstruct justice. They're allowing his cabinet to fly around on private planes. They're allowing his family to use the office to enrich their business. They're allowing people to give huge tax breaks and stuff like that. So they're abusing power

in terms of protecting Donald Trump from Mueller's investigation, and they're abusing their power to enrich powerful people. From a political perspective, you're right. But it's worse than that, and I'm not sure how to talk about this in a way that really sinks in with people because the damage he's doing to institutions is so much longer lasting than this White House and this administration.

Like, being an FBI agent, being a CIA officer, being in the State Department, that's not the greatest job in the world. You don't make a ton of money, tough hours, you work in tough places, you can't tell your family what you're doing. He is eroding their ability to recruit great people

that we rely on to do a lot of important things for us. And like, that used to be something that was sanctified and revered by both parties. And to see the Republican Party turn on the FBI in a matter of weeks is a really scary development, this whole process. I just, every day, Republicans in Congress

are doing the bidding of Donald Trump. They're not talking about what they can do to help people. They don't care about your family. They don't care about your problems. They want to help their donors. They want to help Donald Trump. Every day, Donald Trump is tweeting

about obstruction. He's tweeting about the FBI. He's tweeting about Hillary Clinton. He want to help their donors. They want to help Donald Trump. Every day Donald Trump is tweeting out about obstruction. He's tweeting about the FBI. He's tweeting about Hillary Clinton. He has no answers for you. It is corruption to the core. And corruption folds in the Mueller investigation, but it's also about this tax break that is favored more heavily to the wealthy than any tax break in history, including Bush's tax cut. Because the Republicans are going to be running on, they get that they can't talk about the investigation every day. So they're going to talk about that tax cut. But the idea that they think that they're going to get away with talking about this tax cut, and if they, and companies give out $1,000 bonuses, and that that's going to be a political winner, and that's

it, when they've given like billions and billions of dollars to all these banks and ripped away consumer protections, and Donald Trump's, you know, trying to pass a rule so that restaurant owners can take tips from their waiters and waitresses. There's so much good stuff here that we should be talking about every single day. That sounded weird. It's very scary though the way the numbers

have moved on this tax bill in a very short period of time. It used to be largely unfavorable. Because we're not making the argument. Because we're not fighting this fight. They're making announcements where they say, this corporation gave employees a $1,000 bonus, which was 2% of the aggregate tax cut. And that context never gets there. And also, let's just be honest. Doing a tax reform plan is hard when you're trying to be neutral, when you're trying to fund the government, when you care about healthcare,

when you care about education, when you care about roads. It's actually not that fucking hard to borrow $1.5 trillion from the future and distribute it. They even fucked that up, right? They even fucked that up because they gave way too much of it to the wealthy. But the benefits are accruing to people

because they borrowed it from the future and from our ability to pay for things we care about moving forward and they are benefiting from that and it will help them that's just true and it's unfair and it's wrong but we need to find an argument against what they're doing despite the fact that it is true that people are getting these bonuses is it is true that corporate tax cuts mean that corporations will have money that they can use they're not going to use even they'll use a fraction of it but that they will use to give back to their employees

even if it's just for a PR boost. And I will say that historically, I'm sorry, step on your applause. Love it, I know you do. Never again. And I will say that historically when wages have gone up,

that's caused a freak out from big time investors because they think that interest rates are going to go up. And usually interest rates going up cause the stock market to go down which leads companies to lay people off. So right now we're entering a kind of cycle with a dangerous precedent. So I'm thinking that Democrats have a stronger position than they

think they have. Yeah. And I just, we know how Democrats get when they get a pullback that says the tax cut is a little more popular and people think the economy is a little bit better. And then they're like, oh, we've got to find another issue. No. This is the issue that we're fighting this election on. And we've got to figure out the message. All right. When we come back, we'll have Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmel. He is the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC,

and he is hosting the 90th Annual Academy Awards right here at the Dolby Theater. Jimmy Kimmel! Jimmy Kimmel! This is him! Right there, there you go. Thanks. Hi, everyone. Well, thank you for having me.

I missed the first part of the show. Have you guys talked about Trump? We were waiting for you, man. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for being here. It's my pleasure. It's great to be here. Do you remember the first time we met?

Yeah, in my office at the White House. In your tiny little... Windowless basement office. Wow, this is relatable. Bill Simmons brought you in. I remember. And I was hosting the White House Correspondents Dinner, and you'd written President Obama's material for that dinner, a lot of it.

That was Lovett screaming backstage. He screams backstage too? Yeah. And we had almost, it was funny, I'll never forget it, because you didn't want to tell me what any of the president's jokes were, and I didn't want to tell

you what any of my jokes were. We just kind of looked at each other like, yeah, it's going to be funny. We looked at each other for a while, and I said, ah to tell you what any of my jokes were. We just kind of looked at each other like yeah it's gonna be funny. We looked at each other for a while and I said that it'll be all right. So you stepped into the political fray last year in May because your son Billy underwent surgery for congenital heart disorder and And I remember when you were going to speak about this, you said to me that when you want to make this argument, you don't want to be preaching to the choir. You want to try to persuade people who don't agree with you. So how did you go about doing that? And since you've been talking about it, have you had

people come up to you and say, you've changed my mind and it's been working? No, no one has said that. Literally no one has said that. I get a lot of hate mail and it doesn't mention anything like that. like that. I will say when, you know, I've spoken about a few different subjects, and when I spoke about my son, the reaction was largely positive. And in fact, most of the negative reaction that I got, at least online, seemed to be from people who were just trying to get others to click through to their articles, you know, just taking a contrary position and I think that was I think most people at the very least they said all right well the guy you know I don't

agree with him but his son had heart surgery and I could see why he's upset and he seems to care about the other people I don't care about the other people but he cares about the other people, and so God bless him. And then I spoke about gun control, and then it was very, very, very different. Those people are intense. Yeah, yeah. That was a whole different thing. The ugliness factor ratcheted it up significantly.

And then they kind of went back to the healthcare thing and then hated me for that too so I got retroactive hate from the healthcare thing and I became as I think they like to call me a Chuck Schumer's puppet so you're multifaceted that's great I remember seeing you host the Oscars

by the way I'm sorry to interrupt but the last time I was on this stage Warren Beatty was standing next to me. Wow. He looked like he'd seen a ghost. He had two envelopes in his hand for no reason. And I walked to the wings and just everyone went crazy. Wow.

Well, that's good because I was just about to ask you some questions for John Legend. So you staved off me making that mistake. You mentioned at the Oscars last year, reaching out and talking to people that disagree with you and how if everybody who was watching reached out and talked to somebody who disagreed with them, that maybe we can make a difference. So fast forward to last week, you made a video where you featured a woman who was a DACA recipient who was facing a panel of people who were people who didn't believe in DACA. And I started watching

the clip thinking like, oh, this is going to be great. That's what I thought it was going to be too. And it wasn't. It wasn't great. By the way, it was the version that we showed on television, the real version was much, much uglier. How was it worse? What happened?

Well, I mean, I almost got in a fight with one of the guys. Really? Yeah, there was no respect being shown for this family. If you didn't see it, what happened was, and I thought this was a slam dunk and I thought this was going to be great and really have a positive effect. And we, of course, you know, we're all worried about DACA and we found a young woman who's in her 20s. She came to the United States when she was a year old. Her parents brought her here. came to the United States when she was a year old. Her parents brought her here.

She's lived in Kansas for her whole life. She had a baby, and now she's a potential subject to deportation. So she's in nursing school, just a great person. So I brought these six people. Actually, I will say one thing that should give us a little faith in humanity is we tried to find people just out on the street, pedestrians, and were unable to find anyone who opposed DACA. And we have a lot of tourists

here in Hollywood. So we're not just talking about L.A. I mean, almost nobody outside this theater is from L.A. And so it's true. There are tourists and superheroes outside. So we found people who talked about, you know, they're against DACA online. And we brought them in.

And I thought, okay, so here's how this is going to go. We're going to sit them down. I'm going to introduce them to this woman. She's got this adorable baby who was born here in the United States. I'm going to tell her story. I'm going to explain that she potentially could get deported to Mexico. Her daughter is an American citizen. You know, how does that work exactly? And then I was going to bring out her fiance who is in the military and who's about to get sent overseas

and will be there for how long he doesn't know. And she could potentially be sent back to Mexico with his daughter while he's fighting for our country. And I really thought that this would have an impact on these people. And it had almost no impact whatsoever. In fact, they seemed madder than if I brought somebody who'd been busted for shoplifting. My favorite moment was the woman who was like, why don't you get an immigration attorney? Like it wouldn't have occurred to them years ago to get an immigration attorney since they were trying to deal with immigration.

And the simple argument that they tried to make is, well, why don't you guys just get married and then you can become an American citizen? Well, first of all, it's not that simple. You do have to go back to Mexico and you could potentially be there for 10 years, according to their immigration attorney. But also, what if they didn't want to get married? What if they'd had a child together and they planned to raise the child together and they weren't married. I mean, his child is an American citizen. The idea that the child's mother would be sent to another country, it doesn't, it makes so little sense to me. I assumed it would make no sense

even to these people who... But they had really, it really did not impact anything. One woman at the end, I thought, was sort of. One woman at the end I thought was sort of... One woman at the end was, she was a sweet woman and she was at least compassionate. She at least had some empathy. I'm not sure that she necessarily changed her opinion either.

So she wasn't the one you almost got in a fight with? She was not. She was trying to plan the wedding. That's what she was doing. Can you describe you're almost getting into a fight over this? There was one guy in particular who kept, when Michael, the military man who works here in the United States, was trying to explain his position,

this guy kept interrupting him with this Sean Hannity bullshit over and over and over again. And it was upsetting him and upsetting his wife and upsetting me. And the baby was sleeping, so the baby was fine. But everybody was upset. Yeah. So can I ask, I mean, obviously you spoke out about health care because you had this family connection. Your son went through surgery and then you went on to gun violence. And then now you've been talking about DACA um what made you embrace not just political comedy which a lot of comedians have done in the trump era but political advocacy what's made you do that well uh real serious concern for the future

of this country and having children you know i, I have four children, I have two older children in their 20s. And when I had them, I was in my 20s. I didn't necessarily think about politics in the future. You know, I was just trying to pay the rent and make sure they had food and maybe take them to Disneyland every once in a while. But now, you know, as I'm 50 years old and my son went through this situation, I saw these families and I saw a lot of low-income people being served at this hospital that relies on donations. And it seemed wrong to me that a hospital should even have to rely on donations. And I saw that even though those kids were getting great treatment at Children's Hospital here in Los Angeles, and it's a great hospital, they train doctors that go all over the country and all over the world and work in every town, but I saw that these people, you know, they had to take months off work.

You know, they can't get Melissa McCarthy to fill in for them that week, you know, like I was able to do. And it upset me, and I wondered how they're, like, making it. Even, you know, you can't work, you're upset, your whole family is upset. It's sometimes, you know, heart disease, at least in my situation, is an operation, and hopefully it works, and then you're done with it. But there are children with cancer and these long-term chronic diseases that they'll have to deal with for the entirety of their lives, and it just so happened that at that time,

the Affordable Care Act was in jeopardy. And I don't necessarily believe that things happen for a reason. I really don't. But it sure seemed like a coincidence. And it seemed like... I just felt like... I don't know if I felt like it was a message being sent to me,

but I just felt like I had to say something about those other people. Mm-hmm. And in doing so, you know, there's kind of an old... In late night television, always the history of late night television is don't show your hand.

Don't tell people what your political affiliation is. I think Jon Stewart really changed that. But when you... But when it came to network television, that really still was the case. I mean, it wasn't until late in Letterman's career that we knew what his affiliation is. You know, Jay Leno, I think most people thought he was a Republican, and he's not. He's a Democrat, you know, but you wouldn't know it from watching his show. And there was some wisdom to that because when you tell a joke,

if you think the person telling the joke is unbiased, you can just appreciate the joke for what it is. The underlying reason is you could potentially lose half your audience if they feel like you're not one of them. A lot of it is, do I like this guy? And that's part of the deal. But maybe the good thing about now having 100 different channels and 30 different talk shows is you can be honest and you can talk about these things and these things that mean something to you.

And it also just so happens that pretty much every late-night talk show host is a liberal. Go figure. And that's because it requires a measure of intelligence. Now, not a ton. Not a tremendous amount of intelligence, but you do have to be over the baseline. Sure, sure.

So I guess speaking of intelligence, one of the things that's been really fun to watch has been when you take people on on Twitter who are much dumber than you. For example, Roy Moore. I think you and Donald Trump Jr. have gotten into it, and I think a lackey of a lackey of a lackey of Paul Ryan.

Or is there a fourth lackey? Anyway, there's a multi-level lackey of Paul Ryan have gotten into it. If you could fight anybody on Twitter, who would you fight, and how would it go? Well, it's hard to top Donald Trump Jr. because

first of all, he's Donald Trump Jr. Which, what could be worse than being Donald Trump Jr.? You're not even Donald Trump. You've got that Jr. at the end. I would, every time if I had to choose

between being Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., I would never, DJ TJ is not the guy that I'm going to choose. I don't think Republicans even like him. I don't know. His wife probably doesn't like him,

let's be honest. I mean, you want an unlikable character. You want somebody that, you know, Roy Moore was pretty great. It's like, who's on Roy Moore's side in this battle, you know? Who am I going to lose in this fight? A horse. But I think the president would be. The president himself?

The president himself. So what would prompt you to take on the president? Well, I never start any of these fights. Someone else always starts them. So I would just wait for him to say something imbecilic. First, I'd probably point out the spelling errors or bad use of quotes. You see when he put Trump in quotes the other day? I get more caught up with that

than the message. It's like, why is Trump in quotes? He's like, you know, it's not easy to put quotes on your phone. It's... It takes some doing. Also the capitalization and it's very bad.

It's insanity. I have an idea and it's very bad. Insanity. I have an idea and I think I know this is I know this would be I know a lot of people would have a problem with this but what if we were all required to take an IQ test? Okay? And that number had to be a part of our Twitter

handle. Had to. That's it. You want to be on Twitter? There's a test. It's got to be there. And then we just kind of know where everybody's coming from. I think it would solve a lot of problems. Before we let you leave,

we did want to play one game, and we have John Lovett here. He's going to host for us. Hello, John. How you doing? Oh, yeah. No, but I'm not making fun of your shoes.

I think they're very patriotic. In fact, I think those shoes, we can't hear you at all. He's saying he bought his shoes at Marshall's. I have to tell you guys, my mic being off is my greatest fear. And the fact that it happened

In the midst Of a battle of wits With Jimmy Kimmel Unbelievable I'm sorry I guess you know what This is your home turf I see what's going on here

I'm going to write a memo Alright Now for a game we call Stay in your lane I see what's going on here. It's my neighborhood. I'm going to write a memo. All right. Now for a game we call Stay in Your Lane. Here's the deal. As you were discussing, last fall in the middle of the debate over repealing Obamacare, Jimmy managed to cut through the noise and humanize the issue in a way that actually really did change the debate. But there were more... He did.

Applaud that. Sure. actually really did change the debate. But there were more, he did, applaud that, sure. But there were more than a few conservative pundits who thought that Jimmy should stick to comedy. He should leave the healthcare debate to the Koch brothers, Russian bots, Paul Ryan, and the rest. But we at Crooked Media believe that healthcare is everyone's lane.

So we wanted to play this game. Now, in this game, Jimmy is going to be charged with reading statements from conservatives about various members of the coastal elite who should have stuck to their lane. They should have stayed in their lane. And you, your job will be to answer questions about these statements. Would anyone out there like to play Stay in Your Lane? Tanya's out there.

She's going to pick somebody in merch. Not bootleg merch, real merch. Hi, what's your name? Megan. I want to mention for the people listening to the podcast, there are a lot of

people here tonight. I mean, they're like cool. There are almost 4,000 people here. That's impressive. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. No, I know they're not here for me.

In fact, my son's girlfriend told me tonight, she said, hey, I had tickets to this event tonight. And I said, oh, well, why aren't you coming? She was babysitting for our young daughter. And she said, well, I didn't know who the guests were going to be. So I sold them. But she found out I was the guest. She sold her tickets.

Unbelievable. I know. That's dispiriting. Tell me about it. To your right, you have a card that has your questions. Megan, you've stalled for long enough. your questions. Megan, you've stalled for long enough.

Who said this about famous TV star Jimmy Kimmel? Oh, don't say that. I don't come down on Jimmy Kimmel's side. I'm not going to get into Jimmy Kimmel. He's not a serious person. Was it A?

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie before being blocked from the VIP line at Newark International Airport? Was it B, Anthony Scaramucci before a screen test for Dancing with the Stars? Or was it C, Eric Trump during an appearance on Fox & Friends that he hoped might result in his first hug from Donald Trump? So Megan, who said that about Jimmy Kimmel? Was it Chris Christie, Scaramucci, or Eric Trump? This is hard. It's a real quiz. I'm going to guess Eric Trump. That is incorrect. Megan, you're 0 and 1. It was actually Chris Christie. Chris Christie said that about Jimmy Kimmel.

Okay. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Thanks for the help, guys. Him I don't blame. By the way, I like that people are actually in a lane while playing this game. Megan.

Yes. Who said this about Meryl Streep's speech at the Golden Globes, which focused on the power of art, free press, and human empathy. I'm concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep's is inciting

people's worst instincts. Was it A? Sean Hannity, during an interview with Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, and Scott Baio, about Hillary's email? Was it B? Steve Doocy while interviewing Laura Trump about tax reform in the Federal Reserve.

Or was it C? Kellyanne Conway as she placed the final nail in the coffin of, it says here, irony. So, Megan, was it Sean Hannity, Steve Doocy, or Kellyanne Conway? Don't help her. This is hard. Would you like to hear the quote again? Okay, I got to go with my arch nemesis, Kellyanne.

Correct. Yes! You are one and one. I'll take it. Megan from Portland, this is your final question. Okay. This is for all of it. Now, former Congressman Joe Walsh said this about Jimmy Kimmel.

He said, I miss Johnny Carson. Didn't even know what his politics were. He was just funny. Kimmel, Colbert, these guys are all nags and boring. Here's the thing. A lot of people have said that. What happened to Johnny Carson? Remember the days of Johnny Carson? Jimmy, what happened to Johnny Carson? Remember the days of Johnny Carson?

Jimmy, what happened to Johnny Carson? He died. He died. Why can't you be more like the Johnny Carson that Joe Walsh remembers Jimmy Kimmel? You mean dead? Are you wishing death on me? I mean alive and unoffended by crimes by the president. Here's the thing, Megan. We did some digging.

This was interesting to me. In 1974, at the height of Watergate, Johnny Carson invited the journalist and columnist Jack Anderson onto The Tonight Show for a 20-minute discussion on the details of the reports and allegations and evidence against President Richard Nixon. Anderson detailed not only the allegations of obstruction, bribery, and other malfeasance, he spoke about the failure of anyone involved to speak up for moral principle.

Which of the following are quotes from Johnny Carson from that interview? Was it A? That seems to be the greatest criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. It's not a particular partisan thing there. No one seems to say at any time that, hey, something is wrong here. Was it B? The public has almost become immune or inured as these revelations come up. Well, all administrations are guilty.

And that's kind of sad to hear. You don't really believe that politics has to be this way? Or was it C? I'll probably be accused by people now of being the Eastern liberal establishment, and I have made jokes about what is happening. I hope not unfairly, but just trying to make humor about what has happened.

But that is considered, when you do that, almost un-American. Or, Megan, was it D? All of the above. I was going to say, it sounded like a trick question, so I'm going to go all of the above? That is correct.

It turns out that people don't remember that Johnny Carson went deep on Watergate and he was pretty fucking troubled by it. Who knew? Thank you for playing Stay in Your Lane. You've won a parachute gift card.

Parachute gift card. Thank you, Jimmy Kimmel, for being alive, unlike Johnny Carson. I appreciate you having me on. Thank you for being here. Guys, give it up for Jimmy Kimmel. When we come back, John Legend. And we're back.

He's a Grammy Award winning artist. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. He's a leading voice and activist on issues of education, criminal justice reform, the founder of Free America, and a friend of the pod, John Legend. Thank you. Hello, where should I sit? Right over there. All right.

Hello, everybody. It's so good to be here. So good to have you. I feel like we're friends in my head because you're actually, you know, in my head a lot of times when I'm at the gym and whatnot. Really? But it's nice to finally meet you guys. Nice to meet you too. Very similar in person. We tone it down on stage. Unfortunately, the on the pod and the off the pod is so similar that our fiances, wives, and boyfriends don't love it. But, you know, what are you going to do?

Okay. So, John, you are an advocate for criminal justice reform. Yes. You spent... It's an issue that there's not a big political... Me and Jared Kushner. Yeah, you and Jared. Well, he's motivated by self-interest.

We have a lot we want to do together in collaboration. We want to really tackle this problem. I think he wants to tackle it in time for his indictment. Yes, yes. Strange bedfellows. You know, it's funny. It all comes full circle because his father gave the $4 million to Harvard

before he applied. And similarly, Jared is trying to create a comfortable space for himself in the future. Right. Yes. You know? Right. The Kushner wing of the penitentiary.

That's how, you know, that's how real grown-up affirmative action works. Right. That's the original affirmative action. So you didn't just start working on this issue. You spent a year touring the country, visiting prisons, jails, detention centers, re-entry programs, listening to people's stories. I actually, I spent a day in a prison recently and it was this life-changing experience where you understand that these are human beings that were supposed to be rehabilitating and were failing

them. Is there a moment that stands out from that year that you carry with you when you do this work? Oh, I carry so many stories with me. First of all, I experienced this from dealing with it in my own family. So we had folks that were locked up. We had friends and neighbors that were locked up. And so many people in our community have gotten really used to losing members of our community for

long periods of time. And I think we're so used to it that we've become almost numb to it because it just happens so often and it's decimated a lot of communities, a lot of families, and it doesn't have to be this way. And when I went on this tour, I met so many people, so many people that were dealing with addiction, so many people that were dealing with trauma. And a lot of times the reason why they're committing crimes is because of all the trauma that they've dealt with and because they've been victims of crime before. And you just came to understand when you met all these people that the system is broken and it's hurting people that have already been broken by life and by their circumstance. It's hurting them even more. And it just motivated

me to get involved. So we're at a time of historically low crime. Yes. And yet one of the most radical members of the Senate has become our Attorney General, who's now going to reverse some of the efforts that have been made on criminal justice reform, and who wants to crack down on things like decriminalizing marijuana. We have a president who uses crime as a scapegoat all the time. Are we moving backwards? Are we failing to make a case about this to people? Well, I think the lucky thing about the silver lining

in the very dark cloud of Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump kind of being tough on crime and law and order candidates, the silver lining is that they actually don't control a lot of policy that affects most people. So most people are locked up in local and state jails and prisons. And a very small percentage of our total prisoners are actually in the federal prison system. And so most of the things that the president and the attorney general can do don't actually affect a large percentage of the people in jails and prisons right now. So a lot of the activism, which is a good thing right now, it's not necessarily great when you have somebody that may be more pro-reform at the federal

government level that, you know, you'd want more things to happen more quickly. But in this period of time, it's good that a lot of things have to happen on the state and local level. So that's where activism has to be. So we've been working with activists here in California. We've been working with folks in Texas. We've been working with folks in Florida. We've been working with folks in New York. We've been working with folks all over the country that are making dents in this system and making real change happen that's going to affect a lot of people's lives. And we can do that regardless of who's the president and regardless of who's the attorney general. So I think there's a slow awakening, but probably too slow to the

understanding of the connection between race and mass incarceration. When you gave your, when you accepted the Oscar for glory in some way. Right here. That's cool. Was that better than right now? Nothing could be better than right now. Nothing. He's a pro. You said you're working on mass incarceration issues

because you thought Martin Luther King would be focused on these issues if he were alive today. Why is that? What's the connection between race and mass incarceration? Well, race has been tied to mass incarceration since the beginning. So as soon as the slaves were freed, folks were trying to find ways to contain the slaves again,

to control their labor, to control their movement, to police them, to lynch them, all kinds of ways to control the movement of black people in America because there was this fear of us, fear of what our bodies would do to them, and fear of us being close to their women, fears of all kinds of things that they believed about us at that time. And so they put laws into place to contain us and to constrain us and to make life as difficult as possible for us in America. And so a lot of the laws that we see now are still descendants of that time. are still descendants of that time. Yeah, I mean, you know, we see efforts to legalize marijuana,

even as there are millions of people of color in jail for those crimes. Yeah, and thank God for people like George Gascon in San Francisco, who, after the law was passed that we can recreationally use marijuana here in California, the law was passed that we can recreationally use marijuana here in California. He said, we're not just going to start from that point. We're going to go back and look at all these records of the people that have been locked up unjustly over the years. And we're going to clear their record. We're not going to make them jump through hoops to make it happen. We're just going to clear their record because they shouldn't have that record because we as a society have decided that this drug is okay for recreational use and we're not going to further punish people and keep a scarlet letter on people for the rest of their lives because they broke a law that we've deemed is unjust now.

Right. So we hope that our LADA will do the same thing, correct? So we hope that our LADA will do the same thing, correct? And figure out what's been going on with the permitting at the Beverly Center. Yeah, that too. Which has just been ongoing. It's the paint job as far as I can tell. Second greatest civil rights issue of our time. Two lanes of Cienega.

Yeah. A lot of the time. Yes. It just went from brown to white. How can you continue to inconvenience love it like this? I don't know it's awful. John Legend also listens to Lever to Leave It. I do, I do proof point

Tommy ask a question so a lot of people here tonight a lot of people listening at home they care about justice what can they do to help push policy policymakers to reform the criminal justice system to get things in a better place? Well, like I said, it's about state and local elections in a lot of ways. We have to know our DAs. I did a program with the ACLU of California,

which was all about knowing your DA. So you can look that up online and actually look who your DA is and understand what their policies have been. And if they're being progressive, if they're thinking about the community when they're enforcing laws. Are they, you know, doing like Gascon is doing in San Francisco? These are kinds of things we can hold our local elected officials accountable for. And so we have to pay attention to those things. And I love that everybody's getting involved in the 2018 election. I love it. Because we have to be active on the state level if we want to control policy. There's so much that happens. And the Republicans, they

were ahead of us on this over the last decade or so. They filled up these state houses. They gerrymandered the districts. They did everything they needed to do to seize power. And they put a lot of laws in place, like in Kansas, that really fucked up their state. And we can take this power back if we vote in these local elections. And criminal justice reform won't happen if we don't have a voice in these local and state elections.

Yeah, and we've even seen in places like Philadelphia that more progressive candidates have been able to win. I was involved in that election. I was involved in the Florida election. I was involved in Chicago. Whenever we have a progressive candidate that we find, we get behind them, we support them, and we try to get a message out to all the people

that listen to us to pay attention to these elections and vote. Because they're often in times when people aren't that focused on politics. They're not usually in, you know, presidential year election time period. So we have to really get people to focus. And that's what we're trying to do. Nice. Now, look, John Legend, you are a musician. And frankly, on the stage, you are foundering.

You are barely making sense. You need some help. I do need some help. You need some backup, which is why we wanted to bring out Chrissy Teigen. Thank you. Hello. What a kind group.

I one day hope to look at Tommy and have Tommy look at me. The way the two of you look at each other when you walk on stage. So listen, guys. We feel incredibly blessed to have Chrissy and John here on stage. And so we wanted to play a game. And so we're going to bring out Dan Pfeiffer because we wanted this to be a team game. Dan, you go there.

Look, the bottom line is, I want to look at, here's what we're looking at. These are two of America's most favorite power couples. Thank you. John and Chrissy have been together for more than a decade. They are America's sweethearts.

Tommy and Dan worked together for a decade, and there was one hug. The night Barack Obama won the election in 2008, they briefly exchanged a single brief and uncomfortable hug. And so we wanted to play a game, the not-so-newlywed game. And we wanted to see... I have a question, John.

Yes. Why do you get to brand the games when we're on Pod Save America? I'm just curious. You know what, John? I was wondering the same goddamn thing. Listen. When we bring a little Love It or Leave It magic

to the Pod Save America live shows, frankly, the people demand it. Okay. John Legend. Okay. I'm just curious. I'm not trying to start fights between you guys. Not an attitude for a guy I'm about to ask personal questions of.

It is so rare I get to bully Jimmy Kimmel and John Legend. What a strange event. So here's how this is going to work. I'm going to ask our couples questions. And they are going to write on the whiteboards the answers, and we'll see if they agree or they disagree. We'll see who wins at the end. Who are you rooting for?

Yeah, they are the favorites. My mother and fiance are rooting for Chrissy as well. It's okay. You're allowed, all of you. Are we going to face each other, John? Yeah, you guys can turn. You know what? You're professionals, and we're a podcast Are we going to face each other, John? Yeah, you guys can turn. You know what? You're professionals, and we're a podcast.

You guys should face each other. That's fine. You guys can do whatever you want. It's a union shop. You should not move the chairs. Chrissy and John, I'm going to start with you. Chrissy, how are you? Good, thank you. You and John were on a flight to Japan with you. Chrissy, how are you? Good, thank you.

You and John were on a flight to Japan that turned around mid-flight and came back because one guy didn't have a ticket. Although, do we really believe that? Absolutely not. I'm a conspiracy theorist. Something went down. Some shit went down and we just don't know. Yeah, we don't know, down. We don't know though. Here's the question.

Who is a better flyer? You or John? In what regard? Just succeeding at it. Fear? Panic? Handling it well? You guys don't even need to talk to each other right now. You're supposed to be writing a name. John Legend, follow the rules. You're supposed to be writing a name. You're supposed to be... John Legend, follow the rules.

You're too cool to follow the rules. I pull off this jacket. If I put on that jacket, I'd be laughed out of the Dolby. You can pull it off. Love it. Alright. That's so cool. I'm gravitationally drawn towards them.

Alright, let's see the answers. Chrissy, what'd you put? I said John. John. Yes. One for one. Tommy. Yeah.

Dan was on a flight with Barack Obama that accidentally landed in the wrong city. Where were they, and where were they supposed to be? Two answers? Who cares? Let something go. Where were they supposed to go?

Let's see the answers, boys. Tommy says Cedar Rapids. Dan Piper says Davenport. And I want you guys to know... Whoa, whoa, whoa. I was fucking there, Dan. You were Cedar Rapids. Dan Piper says Davenport. And I want you guys to know... Whoa, whoa, whoa. I was fucking there, Dan. You were Cedar Rapids. Trouble in paradise.

Follow-up question for Dan. What disgraced figure did Barack Obama defeat despite this plane mishap who Tommy actually worked for for several years. Oh, man. Dan, what's your answer? John Edwards.

John Edwards. It was John Edwards. Tommy, how long did you work for John Edwards? Like eight months. It was tough. Eight months. Eight glorious months. Were you the campaign videographer?

He got passed over. He was like, I'm qualified. What's going on here? I was not. Thank God. John Legend. Yes. Chrissy was recently blocked by Donald Trump on Twitter.

Yeah. Yeah. Trump on Twitter. Yeah. What was her tweet that sent Donald Trump over the edge? I know Chrissy remembers. You don't need to. You can just

say it because I think we know it. I don't remember what she said, but I remember it wasn't that bad relative to other things she said to him. And I was like, well, that put him over the line. That's what made it so great, though. This was a bridge too far, this one. But I forget what it was.

I have it, exactly. You don't remember what it was? I don't. Chrissy, what was the tweet that got you blocked? It was, LOL, no one likes you. And this is why... That was it. This is why I love her.

This is why I love my wife. Chrissy. This is why I love you. I think this one's too easy, but let's see what happens. John won an Academy Award for Best Song after writing the movie Glory. Used in what film? Writing the song Glory for what film? I will say I never saw it? Writing the song glory for what film? I will say I never

saw it. Writing the song. I misspoke. Who's ever in the mood for that kind of film? I got it though. This is why I love her too. It's a tough hit. What's the answer? Selma. Alright. That was correct.

He'll never let me forget it. Tough hit on Selma alright that was correct he'll never let me forget it tough hit on Selma but it is a win Dan who's like I want to watch Selma nobody ever oh my god you want to relax you want to kick back you want to forget your troubles

and watch Selma okay so that was a question about winning an You want to kick back, you want to forget your troubles and watch Selma. Okay, so that was a question about winning an Academy Award. I'm just setting the table. Dan, Tommy was once arrested in our nation's capital. This is a multiple choice question. Marching with Dr. King? That was one of the options.

Dan, what was he arrested for? Was it A, shirtless flip cup? Was it B, breaking hearts on Capitol Hill? Was it C, chaining himself to the White House to protest the Bush administration's Clear Skies initiative, also shirtless? Or was it D, driving with an expired license plate? I need, yes, it's D. Final question for John Legend.

All right. Who does Chrissy think should be the Democratic nominee in 2020? Oh. You don't have to answer. I'm going to tell you, neither of us know who we want to be the 2020 nominee. Do you know? I don't know. I do.

Oh. I do. Okay. Please tell us. No. I'm just kidding. I got such an applause, too. Okay. Please tell us. No. I'm just kidding. I got such an applause, too.

I'm such an asshole. Chrissy's going to keep it a secret because that's part of anticipation, and maybe she'll tell us next year because they'll come back probably. I don't know. This went kind of well. Guys, please give it up for John Legend and Chrissy Teigen.

Not only have they agreed to grace us with their presence, when we come back, John Legend is going to perform. Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Brian. They've won the newlywed game. I almost forgot. We'll be right back. Thanks, everybody.

It's been so cool hanging out with you guys tonight. I'm a big fan, A big friend of the pod. I even know how to play Love It or Leave It song. Is that good, John? I actually never played that, but I figured I could try it and it will work that was close it wasn't perfect I'll do one more song before I go I want to thank you guys for hanging out with us tonight I want to thank my lovely wife Chrissy Teigen for joining us on stage tonight. Truthfully, I feel like she has more fans here than I do tonight,

and that's cool. But she is really a great wife, and she's very inspiring to me. And I wrote a little song for her. It's called All of Me. All of Me What would I do without your smart mouth Drawing me in and you kicking me out You've got my head spinning No kidding, I can't pin you down What's going on in that beautiful mind?

I'm on your magical mystery ride. And I'm so dizzy, don't know what hit me, but I'll be all right. My head's underwater, but I'm breathing fine. You're crazy and I'm out of my mind. Cause all of me loves all of you. Love your curves and all your edges. All your perfect imperfections. Give your all to me.

Give my all to you. You're my end and my beginning. Even when I lose, I'm winning. Cause I give you all of me And you give me all of you How many times do I have to tell you Even when you're crying you're beautiful too The world is beating you down

i'm around through every mood ringing in my head for you. My head's underwater, but I'm breathing fine. You're crazy and I'm out of my mind. Cause all of me loves all of you Love your curves and all your edges All your perfect imperfections Give your all to me I'll give my all to you

You're my end and my beginning Even when I lose I'm winning Could I give you all of me And you give me all of you you. Oh, cause on the table we're both showing hearts, risking it all though it's hard. Cause loves all of you love your curves you know your edges all your perfect imperfections to you you're my end and my beginning even when I lose I'm winning Could I give you all Of me

And you give me all Of you Oh I give you all Of me And you give you all of me And you give me all of you Oh Thank you so much. Have a great night, guys.

John Legend, everybody! Thank you, Jimmy Kimmel. And thank you for coming out tonight. We'll see you guys again soon. Thank you, guys. Have a great night. Bye.